Mark Westoby

One of Westoby's distinct contributions has been to establish and nurture international collaborative networks. From 2005 to 2010 Westoby led the Australian Research Council Australia-New Zealand Research Network for Vegetation Function which mentored postgraduate students and early career researchers from across Australia and overseas. Over the life of the Network 134 postgraduate students and early career researchers participated in a range of working groups.

From 2005 to 2016, he led and promoted the Macquarie University Genes to Geoscience Research Enrichment Program. This was a federation of labs mainly at Macquarie University that offered 15–20 masterclasses each year for PhD students and postdocs. The success of the program for training life scientists was acknowledged in 2012 when the team running the program with Westoby were awarded the Australian Award for University Teaching for "programs that enhance learning" in the category of Innovation in Curricula, Learning and Teaching. From 2017 to 2019 the program was rolled out across Macquarie University as a broader Research Enrichment Program that bridged into humanities, medicine and cognitive science.

Between 2001 and 2012 Westoby initiated and organised annual one-day courses for Australian postgraduate students which focused on current research in ecology and evolution. They continue in association with annual meetings of Ecological Society of Australia and attract around 100 research students each year.

From the 1990s onward, he carried ecological strategy research into a new phase by shifting focus away from abstract concepts such as "stress" and instead onto measurable traits such as leaf thickness or seed size. This made it possible to express species differences along trait-dimensions. He has also worked on clarifying particular dimensions of ecological variation. For example, leaf construction cost can link to leaf lifespan and nutrient economy and ultimately to plant growth trajectories (the so-called "leaf economic spectrum").

Mark Westoby (born 21 September 1947) is an Australian evolutionary ecologist, emeritus professor at Macquarie University, and a specialist in trait ecology.

Westoby was born 21 September 1947, in London, England to Florence May (née Jackson) and Jack Cecil Westoby. The family moved to Geneva when he was 4, and subsequently to Rome. He went to boarding school at Caterham, south of London, then to the University of Edinburgh, Scotland to complete a Bachelor of Science in 1970. He then moved to America to undertake a PhD in wildlife ecology at Utah State University, which is where he met plant ecologist and fellow PhD candidate, Barbara Louise Rice (1944–2009). Westoby attained his PhD from Utah State University in 1973; in late 1974 he and Rice married before moving to Australia in early 1975. When Westoby began a lectureship at Macquarie University, Sydney, he started the Macquarie Ecology Group which, over time, became a leading influence in Australian plant ecology.